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heavytea21475

31 karma · joined October 10, 2022

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heavytea21475··on The ethics of reclining airplane seats
"The ability to recline an airplane seat implies a right to recline an airplane seat" is a very unconvincing argument. If everything unethical must be physically prevented, then what even is ethics? "If I can do it, I may do it" is a rejection of ethics.

Objectively, reclining your seat reduces the available space for the person behind you, who is already cramped for space. Even if everyone could recline (which they can't because of exit rows and back rows), the person behind you would have more space if you didn't.

So you can basically take this two ways. You can be utilitarian and try to minimize total pain ("Airplane etiquette is you only recline when necessary, and if you must recline, just put the seat back a little bit to get the comfort you need without encroaching too much on the person behind you."), or you can be Hippocratic and commit to doing no harm ("If someone is sitting behind you then don't recline your seat").

Either position is defensible, but I can't see any defense of the position that you naturally have a right to reduce your suffering at the expense of increasing someone else's.

heavytea21475··on Show HN: A tool to help you remember shit you are interested in
Is this supposed to be limited to things like people, movies, shows, etc.? It seemed that way based on what search box would accept. I couldn't even add a book via search. And there was mention of articles / blogs... but there's no way to import something like that from what I could tell, so it would be all manual entry which seems to defeat the purpose.
heavytea21475··on Show HN: A tool to help you remember shit you are interested in
This seems really well built. It's fast and responsive. It looks nice. But I just don't understand what I would use it for.

It seems like the idea is to build a database of people, movies, Wikipedia articles and such and then be able to find them via search/links. But I'm not at all sold on why I need this in my life.

Is there a way to make the value clearer? Am I just not in the target audience? Who is going to see this and say "TAKE MY MONEY" and why?

I'm thinking of products that were instant sign-ups for me...

Spotify: For one price, listen to all the music on Earth whenever you want. TAKE MY MONEY!

Gmail: Fast email with 2 GB storage. This was such an instant sign-up they had to make an invite system to slow people getting access.

Maybe could add something like Lichess: Chess training and games, with modern UX, offered open source as a public good. I mean, if you're at all interested in chess, that's an instant sign-up, right?

Trying to say, this idea of presenting a clear value isn't limited to big players like Spotify and Gmail, but can also be done by smaller companies if the value presented is really clear.

What should someone see that makes them instantly recognize they need this in their life, because that's what I'm totally missing here.

heavytea21475··on Show HN: I built a site that lets users find playlists by songs they contain
What does someone's music say about their personality?